


Entr'acte

by avani



Category: Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophia Challoner seeks--and finds--her fortune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entr'acte

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Colourofsaying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/gifts).



> With thanks to Colourofsaying, because I would have never have explored how much I love Sophia without her fantastic prompts!

There was little else more disagreeable, decided Miss Sophia Challoner—Miss Challoner, more properly, being the only female of that surname still scandalously unwed—than being the witness to a true love-match. 

For one thing, that it was Mary, with ice-water through her veins, to carry on in such a matter! For another, that it should be a match that promised as much passion as pin-money! And for a third, that this rich and handsome scion should be none other than Vidal, that prize coveted by every young miss who made her bow into Society! 

Unfortunately Miss Challoner found few members of her family, past and present, likely to commiserate with her circumstances. Avon terrified her, and the Duchess was a prattling ninny; she half-desperately set her cap at Rupert Alastair, until it became quite clear that he was every bit the confirmed bachelor he professed to be. 

(She was not, however, quite so desperate so as to set her cap at Hugh Davenant. Some signs regarding which of Cupid’s arrows a man would be most alluring any young woman of breeding could not help but sense.) 

Her mother was too bent on catching up with years of neglect of her elder daughter, Mary too pragmatic, and Vidal every bit as heartless a brother-in-law that he would have made a betrothed. When Sophy declared in all earnestness that she would drown herself if she didn’t have a new gown to wear to the ball meant to introduce the new Marchioness of Vidal to Society, her mother only murmured anxiously that she should not press their good fortune any further, Mary pointed out Sophia had three perfectly appropriate dresses in her wardrobe, and Vidal helpfully provided her with directions to the nearest river. 

All things considered, therefore, ’twas hardly surprising she came to as bad an end as she did. 

\- 

On the morning after the night Miss Challoner ran away from home, her intentions were these: to follow in the footsteps of the illustrious Kitty Fisher. Perhaps it might not be so fine a fate as to become a Marchioness, she supposed, but there would be good meals and fine clothes and who could wish for more? 

The only trouble was that Sophy was not entirely certain how one became a fallen woman. 

She supposed it had something to do with having your portrait painted, though certainly plenty of respectable women had their portraits painted, and no one said a thing against them. But enough of that; if becoming the subject of enough paintings made one the finest courtesan in the land, than so be it. 

Sophy could make herself notorious enough to suit any painter’s brush without anyone’s help; and what was more, she would find her fortune, if it killed her. 

\- 

Quite the simplest way seemed to be to take the stage. Everyone knew that actresses were no better than they ought to be, and Vidal in particular had patronized more than a few of them. Wouldn’t that take Mary down a few notches, if only she knew! Besides Peggy Delaine had managed it, and wasn't Sophy far more handsome than she? 

Cozening her way into a production was surprisingly simple. It took only a few blinks of her brilliant eyes and a stray mention of her friendship of Miss Delaine to convince a theatre-manager that she had been born to play some foreign queen named Cleopatra in a play written by someone the actors all distractingly called “The Bard”; but it was only so dreadfully dull. Mr. Kendrick, the actor playing Antony, would keep sending her great sheep-eyes when reciting, “Age cannot wither her…” but the rest of his speech went on in so repetitive a manner that she quite lost track of what any of it meant. 

The few days before they were due to conduct their premiere flew by; somehow, they always found something to criticize in her performance, but Sophy was quite sure that her beauty would carry the day somehow. She was even more sure of it when she peeked out behind the curtain some time before they were due to begin, only to find Eliza Matcham sitting in a box before her very eyes. 

After that it was only the work of a few moments to ask an orange-girl to pass a message up to the Matcham box, to be followed by Miss Matcham, looked as though she dared greatly, to slip behind the curtains and join her friend. 

_”Sophy!”_ whispered Miss Matcham. “Whatever are you doing? Your mother’s been desperate, and Mary too! They’ve written to me so many times, asking if I knew where you might be—and here you are—ooh, and looking quite magnificent! Only look at you; you put Peggy quite in the shade.” 

Sophy preened. Somehow her dear Eliza’s admiration made her feel all more alive than Vidal’s cool appraisal ever had. It was quite the queerest sensation: it made shocks of pleasure run up and down her spine in the most agreeable of fashions. 

”Well, of course I do,” she said, smiling benevolently, “I’m to be the Queen, you see. In the Bard’s—oh!” Sophy gasped. “They don’t mean that terrible Shakespeare Mary was always droning on about? The one who wrote _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_ and—what was that Scottish one? _Macbeth_?” 

In the distance, a sound that might have been a wail emerged from the lips of one David Kendrick. Sophy ignored it nobly, and continued: “Well, that’s all the more reason Mary should envy me. I don’t see anyone wanting to make _her_ a Queen, even should they want to make her a Marchioness.” 

Miss Matcham nobly affected the utmost surprise that anyone should take such an incomprehensible action. Then, screwing up her courage to the sticking-point, she pressed her lips to those of the Egyptian Queen for an instant. 

Sophy, for once in her life, found herself quite at a loss for words. 

”For luck,” explained Miss Matcham, blushing, and Mr. Kendrick, again in the background, expressed his relief that at least _someone_ seemed acquainted without the customs of the theatre. 

Miss Challoner opened her mouth to say something, but was regretfully interrupted by the sound of the prompter’s harsh warning that not five minutes remained before the curtain must rise. Miss Matcham took her leave, but not before Sophy took her hand and squeezed it firmly. 

Despite Mr. Kendrick’s predictions of calamity, the production went off quite well. Perhaps it set no records, and neither Mr. Reynolds nor Mr. Gainsborough felt any impulse to capture its heroine on canvas—but the manager of the theatre made quite a steady profit, helped no little amount by the repeated visits of Miss Matcham to her family box for every week the play ran. 

\- 

It was in the aftermath of one of these visits that Miss Matcham finally dared to divulge:"Dearest--if you don't know--" 

Sophy turned on her side, in pursuit of the cooler regions of her pillow. The company had moved onto a production of _Othello_ and as proud as she was of her ability to die in splendid hysterics over the better part of an hour, la! It could be dreadfully tiring. Making her way through the endless pages of the script was still tiresome, but these days even Mr. Kendrick conceded that her habit of simply improvising when she came to the part at which she'd set the script down was "charmingly original" instead of "a plague upon the stage." 

"If you mean," said she through a yawn, "that do I know that you love me, why yes, darling, that I do." Graciously, she reached forward, kissed Miss Matcham's nose, and allowed: "I love you, too." 

She was quite put out of sorts to find that it was true. In the time it took her to recover, Miss Matcham had regrouped. 

"No, it's not that--though I am that glad to hear it, Sophy, truly I am--but it's just that, well, Mary's increasing, you know." 

Sophy considered this. There was a time when it would have been unbearable, to imagine Mary bearing the heir to the duchy of Avon and all its riches, but now, it all seemed silly, somehow. Who had time to worry about babies when the audience roared their applause, when she had the chance to look upon all of her fine costumes, when Eliza blushingly expressed her admiration? 

"Humph," Sophy said, and subsided. 

\- 

All that remains before the curtain can fall on this tale of an actress’s rise is the visit that the infamous Marquis of Vidal paid to the production. It was quite the coup—why, everyone in London knew that the Marquis was no longer in that line, after having fallen heads-over-ears in love with his own wife, but it seemed even such a paragon of domestic devotion would make an exception in this case for such a beauty as the anonymous actress who starred in it. True, there were some who thought she had rather a resemblance to Her Ladyship’s tragically deceased sister, but after all, they did say there were only so many faces to be found in London-town. 

Vidal, once safely secreted backstage, seemed to find no such comfort in platitudes. “Sophia!” he hissed. “You blasted ninny, get yourself safely back home at once. Not it means a thing to me, but I won’t have Mary worried to distraction, least of all over a chit like _you._ ” 

Sophia pouted. “Well, I like that! Not a _how are you, my dear sister_ or a _your talents are unsurpassed_ but one of your demands! You haven’t changed at all, Vidal.” 

Her brother-in-law appeared hardly chastened by her words. “You aren’t my dear anything, and I’ve seen talents like yours—if that’s what you mean to call them—surpassed by a particularly fetching spaniel. I won’t lie to you, but I won’t lie for you, either, Sophia.” 

“Won’t you?” Sophy affected all her powers of persuasion. “Vidal, I can’t go back, I simply can’t—back home, I’m only _Miss Challoner_ , but here, Vidal, here I am the heart and soul of this production! The heart and soul, that’s what Mr. Kendrick told me, just now—“ 

Vidal snorted. “Kendrick, is it? I should have known there was a man involved. Tell me, then, who’s prey to your latest set of wiles—“ 

The door to Sophy’s dressing-room opened, and Miss Matcham’s blue eyes peeked out. “Sophy, darling, wherever have you gotten off to—Oh. My Lord Vidal. Pardon me.” With a snap, the dressing-room door closed again, leaving a goggling peer of the realm and the rather red-faced young lady glaring at him. 

”So there you have it, Vidal,” snapped Sophy, rather less cajoling but surprisingly more compelling than before. “I shan’t go back, and surely you see why. And before you—you, of all people, you!—lecture me on why I shouldn’t, I ask you this: if you had to choose between your family and Mary, what should it be?” 

Vidal raised himself to his full height. He was no longer drawling. “I would never have to,” he said, rather unfairly given some particulars of his own history. 

Sophy considered him. “Exactly,” she pronounced, and turned her back on him, passing back through the dressing-room door, closing it behind her. 

He did not follow. He did not return to the theatre again. 

Sophy took that as the silent blessing she knew it was meant to be.


End file.
